REVIVING HISTORY'S LOST APPLES

The couple compared the specimen with the US Department of Agriculture's pomological watercolour collection of some 7,000 historical fruit images as well as with century-old wax apple models stored at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Amy Dunbar-Wallis, a plant ecologist at the Univers...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature (London) 2023-10, Vol.622 (7983), p.446-449
Main Author:	Kemp, Christopher
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Agriculture Apples Cloning Cultivars Flavor compounds Flavors Fruits Genetic diversity Genetic engineering Genetic variance Genomes Leaves Mass production
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	The couple compared the specimen with the US Department of Agriculture's pomological watercolour collection of some 7,000 historical fruit images as well as with century-old wax apple models stored at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Amy Dunbar-Wallis, a plant ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder has been collecting these lost or half-forgotten apples in the hope of finding genetic variants that will unlock the flavour and texture profile of the next blockbuster fruit1. The flesh of the Autumn Glory, named in 2011 in Washington state, for example, imparts a subtie cinnamon flavour. In the United States, people have also intentionally reduced the list of commercially available varieties to those with attributes that benefit mass production, casting away hundreds of lesser-known regional varieties.
ISSN:	0028-0836 1476-4687